Upcoming Attractions

Well, I just got home from work, having stopped on the way to buy tickets for a 10 pm showing of Goblet of Fire tonight (wanted to make sure to get them before we had trouble getting them ... my good friend and housemate Dominic gave me money last night for both tickets - he is treating in celebration of being done with the GRE) and I have not even gotten my shower yet (I work construction so that means showering after work rather than before) because I am so excited about the posts I have coming up and wanted to get a preview out ASAP. I had two REALLY good conversations last night after being done with the GRE. The first was with my brother Steve over dinner after the test (he lives in Cranberry north of Pittsburgh so I stayed Wed night at his place, being as the testing center was in North Pittsburgh), during which he made two great observations as I was going through some of the stuff on Alchemical symbolism and also the bit Pauli and I have been discussing on here about "cunning." So those will be coming up (I might get them posted tonight before I go see HP 4 ... but I'm going to get a shower first I think). Then when I got back to Weirton I was rehashing the Steve dinner convo with Dominic and he made a really good observation of comparison with the movie The Mask (which I know is one of Lissa's favorites). So there are quite a few really good posts coming up: the stuff from my brother Steve, Dom's comparison with the Mask, and, of course, I still have to write the magnum opus on why it is not contradictory to say that there is some really good stuff in book 5 of HP and also that somebody like Nathan's wife Julie is still probably just in her criticisms of book 5 as a self contained narrative and how this whole thing fits into my literary theory and definition of narrative ... hey, and I even have a few of my own completely original thoughts to write on LOL. Another Magnum Opus After the brief convo on Potter and The Mask Dominic and I got into another really intense conversation about one of our favorite movies, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (we one time watched it like 5 times within about 5 or 6 days or something crazy like that, one of the times beginning at 5 in the morning after both having been up all night finishing papers or something like that). Now, at the end of this present post will be a brief section comparing Harry Potter and Pirates in a specific aspect, just to sort of give an example of how the discussion of Pirates is congruous with the main point of this blog on Harry Potter, since it is primarily about HP but also about the Inklings and other similar literature and, in the present context of the technology of our culture, film. But for the present I will just give a brief summary of the way this thing on Pirates of the Caribbean will work (by the way, I thought it was so cool that my nephew Gilbert was dead set on going trick-or-treating as a pirate again this year and this year his younger brother Joe, 1.5 years old, wore his pirate costume from last year). The amount of stuff Dominic and I discussed last night simply will not fit on this blog (the conversation was somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hours). There is enough in what we discussed to make the three part progression we discussed into at least three journal length essays, if not three chapters/sections in one complete book. Thus, on this blog, I will put up only 3 very brief outlines or sketches. Pauli and I have discussed in passing before adding a section to this site with downloadable essays, so if that materializes the essay form would be there (we have also discussed a "library" section with a list and links to our most highly recommended literature and movies). In Brief, as a teaser: The first post/essay will be a general/introductory one (or "Why Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp Rock"; The second will be an examination of how the movie represents the mythopoeic in general (I already have the essay of this one written under the title "A Compass That Doesn't Point North: Myth, True Treasure and Romantic Love in Pirates of the Caribbean" ... I had thought I had lost the first draft for good in a hard drive crash but I had sent a copy in email to Nathan for him to read and he was very helpful in sending it back ... I now save all such things out onto a jump drive); and the third will be on how this general mythopoeic minutest can be seen to be taken up (or assumed) into a Christological fulfillment through a heavy concentration of Christological symbolism that can be found in the film. A Teaser/Comparison/Justification: Pirates and HP on the Tripartite model of the Soul: I should note before I write this last brief part that what I am discussing is a 3-part breakdown of the soul, NOT the bipartite-tripartite controversy concerning the human person (the bipartite sees only two distinct "parts" to the person, body and a spirit that functions/exists as a soul in the person, whereas the tripartite theory sees the soul as a distinct, separate third substance. I personally side with the bipartite but the language needs to be heavily qualified here. It must be remembered that Apollinaraius' teaching that Christ had no "human soul" and that the Logos simply took the place of a human soul, was condemned at the council of Constantinople in 381 AD) But what I am talking about here is a 3-part system of the soul. I have briefly mentioned this before in regards to the "horizontal level" of the alchemical structure as Rowling uses it: that, expressing it in maybe more medieval terms for the same reality, I see Ron as the "biological soul," Hermione as the "Rational/Intellectual Soul," and Harry as the "Golden Soul" functioning as the bridge and unity between the former two. In discussing Pirates of the Caribbean last night with Dom, he brought up that Pirates also has a sort of presence of a medieval/classical tripartite soul model. The "appetitive soul" (the appetites) is represented by Jack Sparrow (in a more right ordering of the appetites) and Barbosa (in a more inordinate and evil ordering of the appetites). The "Rational Soul" (or the reason which discerns and judges on matters) is represented by Commodore Norrington (as representative of the law ... some disagree with me and I admit it is speculation, but I believe he also has his "worse" counterpart in the "nominalist mentality" of Governor Swan, just like Sparrow and Barbosa). Between these two elements is the central tenet of the soul ... the will - represented of course by ... Will (Will Turner, the turning point or focul point of the action.) So, in HP and Pirates of the Caribbean we see two instances of virtually the same classical tripartite model of the soul, but each with their own distinct emphasis that flesh out the picture in their own unique way.